


Strength in Graves

by featherloom



Series: Followers on the Road to Gondolin [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Male Friendship, Minor Violence, Psychic Abilities, ghosts (of a sort)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 03:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6139426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherloom/pseuds/featherloom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As they near the Pools of Ivrin, Tuor and Voronwë encounter the spirit of Beleg Cúthalion - and his killer. This story chronologically takes place before "Wards in Winter."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strength in Graves

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a little bit of an experiment, so I hope you'll bear with it. In this story, Voronwë has some measure of psychic powers, which allows him to make a connection with Beleg Cúthalion after the elder elf has died. 
> 
> The interlude in which Voronwë takes a tour through Beleg's memories is a bit of a thought experiment on how an immortal being might think of time and memory, hence the present tense and the focus on location rather than chronological order. 
> 
> Also, Tuor has a bit of a more turbulent relationship with Ulmo in my stories than he does in Tolkien's work. Please let me know what you think of this story and thanks for reading!

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fanfiction. Characters, places, and concepts from _The Silmarillion_ and other histories of Middle-Earth are the property of J.R.R. Tolkien's Estate and I do not claim any rights to ownership or compensation. This is just for fun and no harm is intended.

* * *

 

Voronwë gaped at what had become of the pools of Ivrin, his knees buckling as he landed hard on the black, foamy shore of the lake. The oily water soaked his thin traveling cloak, and a brown stain crawled up the fabric as if it had a will of its own. Voronwë yanked it away and clutched the corner of his cloak in his fists. The water burned his skin.

 

Tuor’s boots crunched in the snow behind him and Voronwë heard the man gasp.

 

After a long moment of gazing at the polluted waters, Voronwë wet his lips and managed to speak.  “There was once great power here. You could drink of this water and receive visions from the West and sacred healing.  One sip could cure you of a week’s weariness. I hoped we might find rest here.”

 

“The Enemy’s reach is long,” Tuor replied, “and getting longer. It appears we may have little time to rest in any case, my friend.”  Tuor approached the water, and the silvery blue of his cloak dappled with the shadowy reflections of the pool.  “This place did have great power,” he murmured as he stepped into the water.

 

Voronwë nearly cried out in warning, but the black slick on the surface of the pool recoiled from the edge of Ulmo’s cloak, and the clear water of Ivrin glittered like gems in the cold winter sunlight. Voronwë watched in wonder as the stones and pebbles of the lakebed were cleansed of their defilement beneath Tuor’s feet. Tuor gaped at the miracle happening at his feet, then cast his gaze around the entire pool.  “There is power here yet.”

 

“Is that – is that permanent?” Voronwë asked, pointing to the patch of clear water around Tuor’s cloak.

 

Tuor shook his head and stepped forward, and the black, polluted waters closed in on the shore at his heels, the oily slick seeping back into the pebbles and sand of the lakebed. Tuor sighed. “Apparently not.  In any case, I don’t wish to use Ulmo’s power so carelessly.  Our mission requires that we remain unseen by unfriendly eyes.”

 

Voronwë stirred and closed his eyes, casting his senses far beyond the lake.  There was an unsettling silence in the air, beyond that which had been caused by the poisoning of Ivrin. Something reeking of evil was nearby, and approaching swiftly, and the creatures of the wilderness shrank back from it with quiet and fear. “Something is coming,” he confirmed. “Something with the Enemy’s shadow all about it.”

 

“Is it dead or living? For you have sensed both hunting abroad before.”

 

Voronwë shuddered. He did not much care for sensing ghosts and spirits. Their memories could overpower his own if he lacked caution. “This is no wraith, but the hand of the Enemy is upon it, whatever it may be.  I sense it is fey and approaching fast.”

 

Tuor nodded. “We had best not be out in the open, then.”  He turned and held out a hand to Voronwë, who reached up to take it.  Tuor gasped and gripped Voronwë’s wrist. “Your hands!”

 

Voronwë looked down and nearly vomited at the sight of the hands that had been gripping his cloak.  Covered in white and red burns and blisters, his fingers and palms had a waxy texture, like a melting candle, and he could hear a small sizzling sound, as if something was eating through his skin.  He couldn’t feel a thing in his hands. The elf started and nearly yelled in panic before Tuor clapped his massive hand over Voronwë’s mouth.

 

“All will be well,” Tuor said with a quivering voice and an unnatural lightness, as if he was, more than anything, attempting to convince himself. “Give me your hands. All will be well.”

 

Tuor knelt in the water by the shore and carefully wrapped Ulmo’s cloak around Voronwë’s burned hands.  Voronwë thought he could hear the man praying as he dipped the elf’s hands in the clear water at their feet.  Voronwë hissed as pain flared and then faded in his fingers. With shaking hands, Tuor gently unwound the cloak from Voronwë’s hands and both of them sighed at the sight of the elf’s whole and clean skin.

 

Voronwë gasped and stumbled backwards from the water, stumbling forward up the beach into a clutch of bare silver maples, sick and dizzy with relief.  It was not that Voronwë feared so much the scarring of his hands – he had seen worse after the Nirnaeth, and worse among sailors on his voyage – but he did not wish to cause his father more grief than he had already endured. Bad enough he was likely believed drowned.  His father did not need to add imagined tortures to his list of regrets.  Regrets tended to linger longer with elves than with men, and the image of Voronwë’s hands would continue to destroy Aranwë for decades to come.

 

Tuor called after the elf, but Voronwë did not stop until a protruding root laid him flat upon an unexpected patch of athelas blooms.  Taking a moment to calm himself, Voronwë prepared to rise and reassure Tuor, who he could hear pursuing him up the hill. Voronwë reached up to pull himself up by a small, crooked stone at the foot of an ancient elm.  Another presence welled up in his mind, and Voronwë disappeared.

 

* * *

 

_Beleg C_ _úthalion often forgets that he is ancient.  Even among the elven folk he is considered long in years. In the far East, he wakes on the shores of Cuivi_ _énin, among the dark of trees and the pure, keen light of the stars. The stars have not changed particularly over the long centuries, and Beleg misses their presence in the light of the Sun. He prefers to travel and work at night despite the dangers; it is the only nostalgia he allows himself.  He does not regret following Thingol into the West._

_Beleg does not imagine time in a linear fashion, although he supposes for Men there is hardly any other way to see it. To him, time is more like the stars, less a path than a vast, featureless expanse populated by bright pockets of strong memories. Younger elves who have never traveled far beyond the caverns of Menegroth often ask how Beleg has become so familiar with the forests of Beleriand, but in his mind, he is always walking them._

_Time is a landscape, and when he remembers it is not by the telling of years but rather in the context of space. The newly-arrived Men and Noldor have a habit of quickly changing the world, and the changes rankle him and disrupt his memories. It is an unpleasant feeling of impermanence that he is not accustomed to, and it bedevils his inner maps and gets him close to the cusp of being lost. And Beleg C_ _úthalion does not get lost. Particularly not on this night, not on this mission. He is moving fast, filtering through landscapes in his mind as he follows an orc pack_ _’s tracks. Gwindor is struggling behind him, gasping for breath and losing his foothold on the rocks. He must keep up or be left behind. This errand is too urgent for mercy. Beleg believes the tracks will take them close to Ivrin, a place he has been often to bathe and pray and sleep under the stars. He will not be sleeping at Ivrin tonight. They are exiting Brethil, and memories of the place are rising up as he passes familiar trees and glens._

_A few miles south, Beleg is halting a moment to pour water on the grave of a mortal woman. The people who once lived here have long since left for the security of towns closer to Doriath_ _’s borders and the marchwardens who guard them. Few Men remember this settlement and none now remember the name of the woman buried here. Beleg first meets Angwen as a nameless girl, squatting filthy in a muddy courtyard among the chickens. He spends several weeks with her, teaching her and her people the use of the bow. In the swamps to the north of Doriath, he is teaching the young Turin the same thing, relishing every rare smile on the boy_ _’s face as he learns the sword and the wild. The next time he had ranges this far into Brethil the Men are just finishing raising this mound around Angwen_ _’s body. Beleg says a prayer over her grave._

_Graves are a new and unusual phenomenon for Beleg since the arrival of the Noldor and of Men.  Beleg found it curious.  Far east of here, he is wrapping Denethor in a cloak on a hilltop as his people wail.  Denethor was brave and mighty, but he has no futile marker. That_ _’s what the Noldor with their great works and the Men with their short time do not understand: Markers are never permanent, and when the land devours them they leave Beleg_ _’s memory riddled with more holes and ghosts._

_Turin himself is a ghost, and when Beleg sees him he sees all versions of him at once, the sullen child in the forest clinging to him like a shadow, the hopeless outlaw, poisoned by rage, and the hero in the Dragonhelm, the passionate leader, plagued by fate. His memories of Turin feel stronger than others, perhaps because he knows Turin won_ _’t last. He takes comfort in the fact that Turin_ _’s ghost will walk with him in the woods through the long centuries. Being around Turin makes him remember time. It makes him want to build a futile grave._

_And here he and Gwindor are, near the clear pools of Ivrin, having killed orcs as he has killed them from the beginning all across Middle-Earth. And here is Turin, the child, the outlaw, the hero, beaten and bloody and surrendered to dreams.  He will release him and they will walk in the woods across leagues and centuries together.  An old, forgotten fear stirs in him as he raises the sword_ _– he is in a woodland far to the south, tied to a tree, starved and half blind from the brands thrust in his face. The men are drawing their swords and Beleg wonders if this is how he dies._

_Pain and heaviness bloom in his chest and Beleg wonders, for a memory has never been this strong before, nor ever taken on a course that differed from what actually happened.  He returns to the shores of Ivrin in time to hear Gwindor_ _’s wail, to see the fury in Turin_ _’s eyes collapse into shock and devastation.  In his mind he returns to the shores of Cuivi_ _énin under the stars, but his body cannot escape and follow, and the woods vanish like dust in the wind around him.  His last sensation is coughing up blood, and the bemused thought that this damned boy whom he raised and loved will likely raise him a gravestone._

 

* * *

 

Gasping, Voronwë recoiled from the stone and retched into the snow-covered leaves on the forest floor. Voronwë had heard tales of Beleg Strongbow from the surviving members of Turgon’s army, but the elf in the flesh – even in the spirit – was enough to overwhelm him.

 

Voronwë felt rather than heard a blade tearing cloth at his back, and wildly turned his head to see a mortal man lurking above him, gripping the elf’s cloak in one hand and a knife of elvish make in the other.  Stifling a scream, Voronwë struck out at the man and scrambled to find purchase on the snow-slicked leaves beneath his feet. A strong arm closed about his shoulders.

 

“Voronwë,” Tuor muttered, irritation plain in his voice, “Someone is coming, as you yourself said.  I am trying to help you.  Be silent.” He gently released the elf, who pitched forward in the snow, relishing the cold on his face. “I’m going to finish cutting your cloak off. You’ve gotten the vile powers of the Enemy all over it when you held it in your hands. It will eat through the rest of your clothes otherwise.”

 

Voronwë managed a nod as Tuor quickly sliced off much of what remained of his tattered cloak.  “We’ve got to find you warmer clothes,” Tuor murmured, nearly to himself. 

 

“Unlike you, I need no such thing,” Voronwë said automatically.

 

Tuor laughed. “And here I thought I had a reason to be concerned.”  He frowned at the stone beside them. “Whose grave is this?”

 

Voronwë stood up, dusting himself off, and considered it a moment before answering, unsure whether he wanted to reveal the full extent of what he had seen, especially to Tuor. “An ancient elf. Perhaps one of the most ancient. One of the first of our people.”

 

“How did he die?” Tuor asked, gently removing a rotting pile of leaves from the flowers growing on the grave.

 

Voronwë’s mouth dried and he suppressed a shiver.  “He was attempting to rescue a dear friend and companion, a mortal man.  He was slain by him.  I believe it may have been an accident.  The man I saw had a shadow upon him.  I fear he is a prisoner to his fate.” _He is also, I believe, your cousin_ , Voronwë added mentally, but swallowed that admission on his tongue. No need to trouble Tuor with that.

 

Tuor slid his belt knife back into its sheath. He half-raised his hand to touch Voronwë’s elbow before letting it drop to his side once more.

 

Desperately, Voronwë cast about for another subject matter. “I saw that a group of men had once tied this elf to a tree. They were going to kill him, by sword and fire. They were afraid of him, and they hated him.” He turned to Tuor, and for the first time since he saw the man on the shores of Vinyamar felt a small twinge of fear. “Why would they fear him? Why would they do such a thing?”

 

Tuor froze and looked away from Voronwë, pretending to be interested in the tracks of a deer.  “Some men are more dangerous than all the creatures at Morgoth’s command,” Tuor finally said, ignoring the elf’s hiss at the mention of the Enemy’s name. “They are dangerous because of their fear, and some are more afraid than others, and with good reason.” Tuor’s mouth thinned and he nodded at the gravestone at their feet. “What you can do – what you just did – it’s not right to be able to talk to the dead like that. It’s not – it’s not natural.”

 

Voronwë was about to protest that he did not ever “talk” to the dead when a strangled cry pierced the still cold like the hammer on an anvil. Tuor crouched down, pulling Voronwë with him, and together they peered over the rise at a man in black on the other side of the pools of Ivrin.

 

The man was clearly crazed, and the black sword he wielded seemed to devour the light as it sliced wildly through the air.  He was yelling something, but the words were lost in Voronwë’s panic as he tugged on the hem of Tuor’s cloak. “That is him.  That is the man who killed …”

 

“Beleg,” Tuor finished, eyes fixed on the man before him as he hurtled recklessly into the forest, heedless of the poisonous water splashing against his boots.

 

Voronwë glanced at Tuor in surprise. “How did you know?”

 

“He said his name,” Tuor murmured, and he half-rose.  “I can save him if I follow him now.  I know I can save him.”

 

“That man has a shadow upon him, Tuor,” Voronwë reminded him. “And we must travel to Gondolin with all haste. Remember the words of Ulmo,” the elf finally pleaded.

 

Tuor shook his head. “If we can convince him to go with us – I can save him!” Tuor made to lunge forward but Ulmo’s cloak clutched at him and he landed face down on the beach with a sickening thud. Tuor wriggled feebly in the cloak, which had wrapped itself tightly around the man’s body as a spider web about a fly.  Voronwë gasped and turned Tuor over onto his back.  The elf recoiled at the man’s face, purple with rage.

 

“You cannot – you will not hold me here!” Tuor hissed, but no matter how he struggled the cloak stretched and rippled but would not tear.  Voronwë removed his knife and attempted to cut Tuor loose, but it was like cleaving water – the steel found no purchase.

 

As Tuor struggled and cursed, his eyes took on a fierce fire and his mouth transformed into an animal snarl.  “Be calm, Tuor,” Voronwë begged, holding the man down by his shoulders. 

 

Tuor was nearly strong enough to make him lose his grip, and, as Voronwë heard one of the man’s joints pop, he gritted his teeth and slapped him full across the face.  “You cannot save him,” Voronwë stated, with as much finality and surety as he could manage. “He is lost. But you may be able to save his people. And mine.”

 

Tuor, staring blankly into the woods where Turin had disappeared, released a deep breath. For a moment, his eyes looked far away, and his mouth moved slightly, as if he was deep in conversation with a being Voronwë could not see. Finally, the man sighed and the cloak released him, spreading in a wide fan about his body like a puddle – or blood. Voronwë sighed in relief and stood, straightening up the sad last remains of his own cloak.  

 

He nearly jumped when Tuor finally spoke again. “We ought to clean up that grave.”

 

“What?” Voronwë asked as Tuor stood and staggered back into the forest. Voronwë slung one of Tuor’s arms over his shoulder and took on most of the man’s weight.

 

The pair paused at the foot of Beleg’s grave, and Tuor frowned down at it as Voronwë gently lowered him onto a nearby log. “Why are there flowers growing on it?”

 

Pausing in the middle of scooping away rotting leaves and moss from the flowerbed below, Voronwë shrugged uncomfortably. “I am not sure. They say that flowers grow on our High King’s grave, and on the Hill of the Fallen to the north, on the great battlefield.”

 

“That’s where my parents are,” Tuor mused, tracing the gentle petals of one of the flowers with his forefinger.  A small stab of pain struck Voronwë’s stomach.

 

The elf cleared his throat. “Before you came along, my plan was to go South to Nan-Tathren, and lay myself down under a willow.” He sighed. “I could have rested peacefully forever there. Imagine what flowers I could have grown.”

 

Tuor erupted into hoarse laughter, and Voronwë continued to work in silence, trying not to be offended. When he finally summoned the courage to look up at the man, he was surprised to find his serious blue eyes focused adamantly on his face.

 

“What is it, Tuor?  Are you ready to leave?”

 

“What the men did to the ancient elf. Tying him to a tree. Threatening to burn him.  You know I would never let that happen to you. Never.”

 

Voronwë blinked, fighting a warm, cozy feeling that made him nearly forget the cold he was pretending, for Tuor’s benefit, that he couldn’t feel.  “I appreciate that, I suppose.”

 

“I need you to get to Gondolin, after all.” A flowery speech died on Voronwë’s tongue at Tuor’s frank tone, and he looked up into the man’s idiotic, bearded, grinning face.

 

“Help me clean this grave up so we can leave,” Voronwë finally growled. “Before I put you in it.”

 

“What kind of flowers would grow on me, do you think?”

 

“Weeds!” Voronwë snapped, sending a tiny prayer of apology to an ancient elf in Mandos. It did not help that Tuor was still laughing.

 

* * *

 

 

In a far-flung part of the woods, Tuor’s cousin was still plunging through the undergrowth, a trail of black acid bubbling in his wake.


End file.
